U.S. Press Said Too Little On Cuba, Says Reston

Press, Volume C, Issue 29511, 12 May 1961, Page 13

U.S. Press Said Too Little On Cuba, Says Reston

(N.Z. Press Assn—Copyright)

NEW YORK, May 10.

It was unfortunate in some respects that President Kennedy had chosen to raise the problem of the rights and duties of the American press so soon after last month’s unsuccessful Cuban venture, the “New York Times’s” chief Washington correspondent, James Reston, said today.

“The trouble with the press during the Cuban crisis was not that it said too much, but that it said too little. It knew what was going on ahead of the landing. It knew that the United States Government was breaking its treaty commitments and placing the reputation of the United States in the hands of a poorly - trained and squabbling band of refugees.” Reston said “This same press roared with indignation when Britain and France broke their treaty commitments to invade Suez, but it had very little to say about the morality, legality, or practicality of the Cuban venture when there was still time to stop it.

“If the press had used its freedom during this period to protest, it might have been influential even in the White House, where, instead, it was being encouraged to put out false information and was actually putting it out,” Reston said.

Washington officials not only encouraged the publica-

tion of false information on the Cuban exercise, but resented publication of the fact that the Central Intelligence Agency actually imprisoned Cuban refugees because the latter did not like the way C.I.A. was "running the show,” the correspondent said. “This wide operation was not only planned, financed, and armed by the Central Intelligence Agency, a branch of the Federal Government, but C.I.A. officials imprisoned the Cuban refugee leaders during the landing and put out misleading information in their name,” Reston said.

“When the landings started. American reporters in Miami were told that this was an ‘invasion’ of about 5000 men—this for the purpose of creating the impression among the Cuban people that they should rise up to support a sizeable invasion force.

“When the landing, not of 5000 but of about 1000 men, began to get in trouble, however, officials here in Washington put out the story—this time to minimise the defeat in the minds of the American people—that there was no ‘invasion’ at all, but merely a landing of some 200400 men to deliver supplies to anti-Castro guerrillas already in Cuba. “Both times the press was used for the Government’s purpose. Both times the Castro Government and its Soviet advisers knew from their agents in the antiCastro refugee camps and from observation on the beaches that these pronouncements were false and silly. And both times the American people were the only ones to be fooled.”